وطن MEANS HOME

“زَلَنْطح زَلَنْطح، طَلّعِ قْرُبَك (كَْربَك) وِاْنْطَح.” Baba laughs to himself before asking, “Do you know what that means?” I shake my head. He lets a long stretch of silence settle between us before he speaks again. “You say this to the snails so they will leave their shell.” He waves his hand dismissively through the air. “Us kids, we must have been bored out of our minds. Singing to the snails, but”—he lifts his pointer finger—“it worked if you sang long enough.” He goes on to tell me how he would then pour salt on the snails and watch them die. 

My Baba, Faroukh Natan, is part of a slowly disappearing community: Iraqi Jews. Prior to the establishment of Israel, there were an estimated 130,000 Jews living in Iraq, primarily in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. With the acceleration of Nazism in the 1940s, anti-Jewish sentiment increased dramatically, and on June 1, 1941, during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, an antisemitic attack known as the Farhud broke out in Baghdad. During the Farhud, approximately 200 Jews were killed and an additional 1,000 to 2,000 were injured. The mass looting and destruction of over 900 Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues continued for nearly two days. These attacks irrevocably damaged the sense of security formerly held by the Jewish community in Iraq. Over 80 years later, the Farhud, and the increased antisemitism in following decades, is still vivid in the memories of surviving Iraqi Jews. 

Faroukh, Iran, late 1950s

One evening, I am looking through a book of old photographs that Baba has kept from Iran and Iraq. I come across a black and white image of a handsome young man on a moped, with a slightly older-looking gentleman beside him. “That’s me. On my Vespa.” I am overjoyed by this glimpse at Baba, surely no older than I am now. 

I ask who the man is beside him. “Our gardener. His name was Mohammad Reza.” I expect the story to end there, but Baba goes on. “He got run over by a car that broke his foot. We took him to the emergency room since he did not have any money. They were going to amputate his leg as it was cheaper than fixing it. Baba [Faroukh’s father] went there and paid for it. I remember, years later, [Mohammad] was part of the mob outside Baba’s office shouting ‘death to the Jews.’” These betrayals from those once close to Faroukh’s family often appear, almost casually, in conversations of his past. 

Once, I asked him if he thought he would remember an act of kindness just as vividly. He said, “I do.” His family had lived in Iraq for as long as he could remember, right up until the Farhud. Faroukh’s parents recalled that their neighbor, a Muslim man, came to them one day and told them he feared he would no longer be able to protect them. Up until that point, this neighbor had watched over Faroukh’s family and their home to prevent intruders, robbery, and vandalism. With antisemitism rising in Iraq, he felt his efforts were no longer enough to keep them safe, and he urged them to flee the country. In the early 1940s, Faroukh’s immediate family left for Iran. Many of his cousins, relatives, and members of the greater Iraqi-Jewish community remained, but any hopes of reestablishing the former conditions of Jewish life in Iraq were quickly fading.

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 In a speech made at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in 1947, Iraq’s foreign minister Muhammad Fadhel al-Jamali voiced concern that the establishment of an Israeli state would deteriorate the conditions for Arab Jews in the Middle East. “In Iraq alone, we have about one hundred and fifty thousand Jews who share with Muslims and Christians all the advantages of political and economic rights. Harmony prevails among Muslims, Christians, and Jews. But any injustice imposed upon the Arabs of Palestine will disturb the harmony among Jews and non-Jews in Iraq; it will breed inter-religious prejudice and hatred.” Al-Jamali’s prediction turned out to be entirely correct. 

In July 1948, among rising tensions between Iraq and the newly established Israeli state, Zionism was declared a capital offense in Iraq. Any Iraqi Jew could be convicted on the sworn testimony of only two Muslim witnesses. In the following months, Jews were forbidden from banking or making foreign currency transactions. Eventually, all Jewish workers and officials in government departments were discharged. Money was taken, homes were destroyed, and passports frozen; suspects were tortured, fined, imprisoned, or killed. The execution of Shafiq Ades, a Syrian-born Iraqi Jew, is generally considered the final act that solidified the need for Iraqi Jews to flee. Ades, despite no existing evidence that he supported Zionism (by some accounts, he was outwardly anti-Zionist), was charged with the offense of Zionism and accused of financially supporting the Israeli military. His trial lasted only three days, during which he was unable to plead his case, was allowed no witnesses on his behalf, and was found guilty by a known anti-Jewish judge. Ades was hanged in front of his home before a crowd of around 12,000 individuals. The execution of Ades, a well-known and well-respected businessman, displayed to the greater Jewish community that even wealth and status could no longer protect them. Even a Jew who expressed no support for Zionism was at risk. It solidified the assumption within Iraqi society that a Jewish Arab would, inherently, abandon any existing loyalties to their home country in favor of supporting Zionism and the establishment of Israel. 

As I continued to research, it became increasingly clear that the establishment of an Israeli state in formerly Mandatory Palestine played a significant role in the rise of antisemitism within Iraq. I found myself growing curious about Baba’s own perspective on this and if he felt any resentment towards Israel or Zionism. “No. Not really. I remember we were listening to the radio when the UN announced [the establishment of an Israeli state]. [Our family] thought it was a good thing. We didn’t expect it to happen.” As I continued looking into the accounts of other Iraqi Jews, Baba’s categorization of Israel’s establishment as a “good thing” seemed to be a shared sentiment  among a large number of Arab Jews at the time. The feasibility of Jewish existence in Iraq was dwindling, and there was hope that an Israeli state would deliver on its promise as a safe haven for all Jews. Some Arab Jews believed there would be a place for them in Israeli society, something they had been denied in their home countries. In many ways, the Iraqi government’s fear of Iraqi Jewish support for Zionism was self-fulfilling. 

Although Iraq had previously banned Jews from leaving the country, they temporarily reversed this ban in 1950. A bill was passed allowing a one-year time frame in which Iraqi Jews could emigrate to Israel if they relinquished their Iraqi citizenship. The Zionist movement was eager to facilitate this mass immigration. A Jewish population outnumbering the native Palestinians was the only way to fully realize early Zionist aspirations. Quickly, a massive airlift operation called Operation Ezra and Nehemiah was established, aiding the arrival of 120,000 to 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel between 1951 and 1952.

Faroukh’s great grandfather إلياهو (‘Iilyahu) center, his daughter روزا (Rosa), to his left, and his son ناحوم (Nahoum),  ناحوم with his wife to the right, Iraq, 1910s

For years, I have known these as real but distant facts. I didn’t know what intimate knowledge Baba held of this event. “It was the first time I was on a plane. 1951, I think.” It was just over a year after النَّكْبَة (the Nakba, which translates to the catastrophe), in which the Palestinian Arab population was ethnically cleansed by the early Israeli militias through violent displacement, dispossession of property, and the suppression of identity, culture, and political liberties. By the end of  النَّكْبَة, over 75 percent of former Mandatory Palestine was claimed as the new state of Israel.  Thousands of Palestinians were killed and nearly 750,000 were forcibly displaced from their homes. The surrounding Arab countries were entirely unprepared for the massive influx of refugees. Israel was equally unprepared to deliver on its promise of refuge for the tens of thousands of Iraqi-Jewish refugees. Faroukh, his parents, and a number of his siblings were among the thousands arriving in newly occupied Palestinian territory. Faroukh’s family had come to aid their cousins, who had fled Iraq for Israel only months prior and were now being held in refugee camps. Faroukh tells me about the moments after the plane landed. “We [...] came to a stop and they wouldn’t open the doors. Then, you know, through the vent. Just like if you imagine Auschwitz. Gas starts coming out of the vents. I think they were trying to get rid of”—he pauses—“whatever.” I am horrified by this story and in disbelief that I have never heard it before.

I began my search for information out of desperation to prove that what my family went through had truly happened, that it had been real. The search brought me to a YouTube interview titled “The forgotten history of Arab Jews | Avi Shlaim.” Shlaim, an Iraqi-born Jew, is now one of Israel’s “New Historians,” a movement among Israeli scholars who interpret Israel’s history with a critical view of Zionism and the establishment of the country. Shlaim fled Iraq in 1951 as part of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah and emigrated to Israel, forfeiting his Iraqi citizenship. In the interview, he describes his own story of his arrival to the country. It bears an uncanny similarity to Baba’s memories. “We were in for a shock because at the airport we were sprayed with DDT which is something you spray animals with. Insecticide. It was a horrible shock and quite traumatic.” This is how I learned that the “gassing” Faroukh had described to me in his story was DDT, a synthetic insecticide developed in the 1940s that is now classified by U.S. and international authorities as a probable human carcinogen.

When I call Faroukh and relay Shlaim’s story, he tells me it was nice to have his memory corroborated; he hadn’t been sure it had really happened. 

Once Faroukh and his family were allowed off the plane, they were taken to the immigrant and refugee absorption camps called מעברות (Ma’abarot). Faroukh stayed at these camps only temporarily to provide support, food, and supplies to our family’s cousins. He describes the rations to me. “Some milk maybe, I don’t remember. Chicken, not other meat. Our rations—we used to give [them] to [our cousins] to eat. Absolutely no food, walking downtown and the only thing you could find, if you found it right as the guy came out, was boiled corn or felafel until they ran out. I mean basically if you aren’t there in the first 20 minutes, it [was] gone. They were starving.” 

In the video interview, Shlaim echoes this account. “We lived in tents and the food was very poor, very poor. Quality of the sanitary conditions were very, very poor, very elementary, very basic. Some of the transit camps were surrounded by barbed wire and this evoked terrible memories and associations in the mind of Jews. One last point—the managers of the transit camps were Ashkenazi Jews.” Through my own research, I discover that in 1951, 75 percent of Jews from Arab countries were forced into these camps, compared to only 18 percent of Eastern European Jews. The Ma’abrot was an enduring aspect of the plight of Arab Jews.

The discrepancy between the treatment of European and Arab Jews was stark. Ashkenazi Jews were given priority with housing, leaving the refugee camps almost entirely populated by Arab Jews. In Avi Shlaim’s words, “The Zionist movement was in origin and in essence a European movement led by European Jews who wanted to create a Jewish state for European Jews.” It is perhaps, in hindsight, clear that an Israeli country which was established through ethnically cleansing native Palestinians would not have welcomed any Arabs with open arms, Muslim or Jewish.

Faroukh and his father ثاول (Shawool, Iran, mid 1960s

When Faroukh speaks of Israel and the treatment of his family, he speaks with an air of pragmatism and resignation. “All the Arabs and people from the Middle East that had gone to Israel as refugees were treated as second-class citizens. Everyone thought the European ones were the educated ones, and that really never changed for many years.” His words are matter-of-fact. As our conversation about the camps continues, though, I begin to sense undertones of bitterness and resentment which are rare for Baba. “You could feel it there. There’s no doubt. They held people from the Middle East as inferior. [Israel] was a young country, but you’d think they’d be a little more conscious of that kind of thing. They’d just come from [the Holocaust]. The thought was ‘these are animals. They are uneducated.’ And that’s…I think that’s how they looked at us.” Faroukh and his immediate family did not stay in Israel. Instead, they left only a month after arriving and would spend the next few decades in Iran. Faroukh tells me later that he couldn’t wait to leave the camps.

When I speak to Faroukh, he rarely acknowledges feeling conflicted between Jewish and Arab identity. If I ask him outright if he felt obligated to suppress either one, he would tell me no. There are times, though, after we have spent hours exchanging our thoughts, that his tone will begin to shift. He will say things that, just for a moment, allow me a glimpse at a much more nuanced and conflicted view of himself and his identity. It is on one such occasion, after the end of a long phone call, that he says, “When you are standing on two logs in the water and they are floating apart, you have to pick one.” For just a moment, I imagine him in a river. 

Jewish or Arab, Iraqi or American, citizen or immigrant, dangerous or vulnerable. I wonder what he has stood on, which logs he has chosen. They have all drifted so far apart. 

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When Faroukh was in his early 20s, he forfeited his Iranian citizenship and moved to the United States. It was only then, with an American passport, that he returned to Israel again. He received the reception that, as a young boy, he had expected in this country which promised him a place of belonging. He no longer felt as though he was less than his Ashkenazi counterpart. He was an American Jew now, not an Arab one. Not the enemy which was to be feared. He had chosen his logs, and received affirmation that he had chosen correctly.

The more I came to understand Baba’s history, the more I began to wonder how deeply this ‘choice’ might run. In my childhood, I didn’t recall feeling a sense of closeness between our family and the Arab world. I wondered if it was just difficult to speak of or if a complete rejection of his identity had occurred. Faroukh holds resentment so strong that it is almost tangible. He recalls friends, coworkers, and community members who turned on him. He hears them chanting for the death of Jews, seizing his family’s assets, occupying his home, and ultimately defiling his memory of his entire country. I understood his resentment, but I wondered if there was tenderness too, for himself and his culture. I wondered if there was pride. Once I asked him if he saw himself as an Arab. There was no hesitation before he said, “Are you kidding? Of course we’re Arabs.” He is a soft-spoken man, but he said this with an assurance which nearly bordered on offense that I would ask such a question. “I always said that’s what we were. I never tried to hide anything.”

As Shlaim puts it, “We were Arab Jews. We spoke Arabic at home. Our culture was Arab culture. Our friends were Arab friends. Muslim-Jewish relations were normal, everyday experiences. There’s nothing exceptional about it.”

There are some individuals, including Shlaim, who propose Jewish-Arab identity as a bridge between two polarizing worlds. This is not my personal stance. I do not see the existence of Baba or my family as proof or encouragement that the native Palestinian people and the large presence of predominantly European Jews can simply learn to understand each other. It would be an insult to ask my Baba to extend understanding to the proponents of antisemitism in Iraq and Iran. It would be equally insulting to ask this understanding of Israel and Zionism from the Palestinian people. Instead, I see in Baba a people that have been denied acknowledgement, empathy, and understanding. He is not proof of a speculative future where everyone can come together and live in peace. He is someone that I must listen to without judgment, in the same way that we must understand, uplift, and platform the voices of the Palestinian people today. I am desperate to make sure my family’s language, suffering, culture, joy, and voices do not disappear entirely. I must do everything within my power to ensure this does not happen to the Palestinians. My obligation is because of my family’s Arab identity and because of my Judaism, not in spite of it.  I must feel for the Palestinian people what I feel for Baba and our family. Both are people that, despite insurmountable cruelty, suppression, and devastation, are still present, still proud, still alive. The struggle must be shared. 

When another man floats by you in the river, his own logs drifting apart, you must help him hold on. Tell him they came from beautiful trees. 

BENJAMIN NATAN R’27 hopes he can see Baba’s country someday.